I hate to say I told you so, especially since I’ really only saying it to myself. but months and months ago when the fifth Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA was announced I penned a piece about how I wasn’t all too excited for it. Somehow the franchise, which hasn’t produced anything all that good since the late 90s, still occasionally kicks. Every few years we get some spin-off that either further convolutes the main continuity, which at this point you’d need the Tenchi farmers almanac to piece together, or ignores it altogether but offering nothing better in return. My fears that this new entry would be yet another waste of time and effort were confirmed with its first episode, and now Tenchi Muyo OVA 5 Episode 2 has reinforced them.
Before we continue, it’s worth mentioning the viewer having any chance of knowing what the hell is going on in this episode is contingent on them having watched the early 2000s Tenchi Muyo! GXP; A spin-off starring some earth dork named Seina Yamada who, instead of building a harem on earth like Tenchi, flies off into space to create his own harem with pirates, galaxy officers, and even a furry! You’d think that’d be cool, and the anime was directed by Excel Saga’s Nabeshin, but it wasn’t too memorable for most of us. If you a rare fan of the series, Tenchi Muyo OVA 5 Episode 2 is the epilogue the rest of us didn’t want.
This is Kiriko Masaaki, she’s somehow related to Tenchi and is Seina Yamada’s main wife in his wife harem. You’ll spend most of Tenchi Muyo OVA 5 Episode 2 watching her talk to various members of the now completely oversized Tenchi household about wedding plans. It used to be a respectable number of beloved aliens ladies like Ryoko and Ayeka who inhabited the premises, but now there are so many yahoos you can’t keep track of any of them and the fan favorites barely appear. We do get to see Seina though, who now has a beard, talking to a bunch of girls who aren’t in his polyamorous marriage situation but we guess he’s won them over too? I don’t understand either.
Perhaps the only the fifth OVA has over the fourth part, recently uploaded to Crunchyroll for your viewing displeasure, is that it’s not quite as dull. Don’t get us wrong, it’s mostly the same in that it’s just one conversation after another featuring character you either don’t know or don’t care about. Again, even the few remaining people who might care about Tenchi Muyo! GXP anime aren’t going to have read the GXP light novel series where so much of the information Tenchi Muyo OVA 5 Episode 2 spits out at you comes from. This all said, at least compared to OVA 4, these conversations are a little more spirited and the cast of characters is a little more colorful. We still can’t imagine anyone getting much from it though.
You can watch Tenchi Muyo OVA 5 Episode 2 on Crunchyroll now.